


The Absence

by vailkagami



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Telepathic Link, being the last of your kind is even more stressful when your kind is telepathic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-07-16 15:08:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16088618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vailkagami/pseuds/vailkagami
Summary: Something is wrong with the Doctor in the wake of his latest heroic act, and Amy and Rory have no idea what to do. Fortunately, River does.





	The Absence

It is always terrifying when something happens to the Doctor. As much as he tends to run into trouble and get himself into situations from which he needs saving, he is still locked in Amy's imagination as the one who _does_ the saving. Seeing him vulnerable like this, seemingly lifeless and unable to do anything but rely of them to help him makes Amy feel like a child again, completely out of her debt and stuck with a responsibility too great for her to carry.

It makes her feel very determined, too, because the Doctor is her friend and she will not let anything happen to him if she can do anything about it at all. And if she can't, she will find a way anyway.

And if she can't do that, then Rory will. Amy doesn't know what he could possibly think of that she can't, but she knows he will, because he has to – because she's relying on him to step in where she can't, and because he loves the Doctor, too. If nothing else, he can hold her hand like he does now and that already helps, even if it doesn't improve the situation at all. At least she's not alone in this.

And if neither of them can't think of anything, River will. There is certainty in that. Like them, River would burn down the universe to save the Doctor. Unlike them, she actually can.

It's Rory who makes the suggestion. “Maybe River can help,” he says as they are standing at the Doctor's bedside on the fouth day without change, and there's that little catch in his words, that hesitation before he calls her River, like he only makes up at the very last second which name to use.

Amy wouldn't notice if she didn't go through the same thing every time as well. She's found she calls her Melody when she is willing to face the fact that this woman is her daughter whom she held in her arms as an infant and promised to keep safe and who is, in a way, lost to her forever. It's River now, because she can only deal with one tragedy at a time, and because their lost little girl cannot save the Doctor, but River Song can.

“But we have no way of contacting her,” Rory adds, defeat in his voice, but Amy shakes her head and grips his hand tighter. “She'll know we need her,” she tells him. “She always does.”

(It has to be River, because for Melody, it should be the other way round.)

In the end it takes a phone call. They don't have a number for her, they don't have the Doctor's means, but they call anyway, any random number on the phone in the TARDIS, and Amy speaks into the silence on the end, the static crackle of the universe. “The Doctor needs help,” she says, “and we don't know what to do. Please come.”

River is there when she leaves the TARDIS. She's standing next to the bed, next to Rory who'd stayed with the Doctor while Amy made the call. “What happened?” she asks. She sits on the edge of the bed and places her hand on the Doctor's forehead, runs her fingers through his hair. “He's even colder than usual,” she mutters. Amy hadn't been able to find much of a difference, but she trusts River's senses.

She just doesn't know what to do with it.

“One of his hearts is beating normally,” Amy explains even as River takes out some humming thing that glows and aims it as the Doctor's chest.

“Normal for a human,” River observes. “Far too fast for a Time Lord. And the other isn't working at all. But aside from that, I can't find anything physically wrong with him. Nothing that _caused_ it. _What happened_?” she asks again, and this time she turns to her parents with such a look of desperate pleading on her face her mother forgets, for a moment, how to speak.

“There was a thing,” Rory says. “Something without a body. It was killing people. The Doctor stopped it somehow, by tricking it into attacking him, but he collapsed afterwards, and hasn't woken up since.”

“We don't want to involve UNIT, much less anyone else,” Amy adds, because her husband still knows how to speak and it reminds her that she's strong, too. “But it was days ago, and we're running out of ways to yell _Wake up_ at him.”

“Tell me everything about that creature,” River demands, and so they do. When they are done, she doesn't know what it was, exactly, but she has stories about things similar to it, just like the Doctor always seems to know something that is somehow somewhat like whatever they are fighting. They get around, more than Amy and Rory could imagine. It's always fascinating when the Doctor finds something that is new and completely unknown even to him, and very frightening.

“It sounds like some kind of psychic vampire,” River tells them. “I've met things like that, and I've seen the Doctor deal with them. They feed off people's thoughts and emotions. Make them experience everything they ever felt, and every potential feeling, all at once, sucking it all up and leaving them empty. Their victims either die of the overload or are left a hollow shell.”

“But that didn't happen to the Doctor, did it?” Rory hurries to ask. “He's not dead, is he? I mean, empty. He's going to be alright.” Amy loves him.

“No, he's not empty,” River confirms, and Amy loves her, too. “I believe he tricked the creature to feast on his mind and then poisoned it with all his memories and emotions. He has a lot of them.” An emotional history that would kill a lesser being.

“He can stand it,” Amy says. “Those are his feelings; he's handling them all the time.”

“That's not how it works, but you're right. The Doctor is not going to die from the emotions. Not like this, anyway.”

“Then what is wrong with him?”

“My guess is – and I'm just speculating here – but I think that he probably withdrew deep into his mind to protect himself from the overload. And then something severed the connection, or he got stuck there, one way or another, and that's why he can't wake up now.”

“But he's still in there, right?” Amy asks to make sure. “That means we can get him out.”

River looks at her for a moment. Then she smiles; a mask. “Of course we can,” she says, all confidence and optimism. She reaches out to put a reassuring hand on Amy's, and Amy has never felt this keenly how far she is separated from her little girl, but she allows the touch.

“Okay, then,” Rory claps his hands, rubs them, and kind of bounces on his feet in a display of nervous energy. “What are we gonna do, then?”

“What do you need?” Amy adds, because she know that this will be River's show, probably. The best Rory and her can hope for is that they will be able to help out somehow, beyond standing in the back, watching.

“I'll find everything I need in the TARDIS,” River tells them. “Just you wait here, watch over him. I won't be long.”

 

-

 

In the end, River isn't gone for more than ten minutes. In the meantime, Amy is sitting by the Doctor's side and holding his hand, while Rory is standing next to them, his arms crossed because he doesn't know what to do with his hands. They are joking around in speculation of what absurd object River will pull from the TARDIS and what she will do with it, because forced optimism beats worry, and whenever they stop talking the silence turns dreadful in a second.

When River comes back it's with the weird helmet-like things they both expected somehow, and the words, “The Doctor could do this without this kind of equipment, of course, but none of us is telepathic, so you'll have to use these.”

The words were not as expected. “Us?” Amy asks, after sharing a confused glance with her husband. “What about you?”

“No. No, it can't be me. It has to be you.”

“Why not?”

“This device, it will connect your minds. You must enter the Doctor's mind and show him the way out. But the connection goes both ways. The Doctor and I, our time lines are too far apart. There are things I know he cannot be allowed to see. And things I must not learn yet that have already happened to him. So in this, I cannot help him.” In the end she sounds like she is close to tears, and her eyes are suspiciously bright when she looks at Amy, even though her face gives away nothing.

Amy's heart aches, in a way that feels oddly right. “It's okay, Melody,” she says with the most reassuring smile she can pull off, and it's surprisingly easy. “We'll get him back here, I promise.”

 

-

 

Amy doesn't know what she expected. She didn't really expect anything. As a little girl she sometimes imagined what it would be like to read other people's thoughts, imagined them like voices only she could hear, and maybe that's what she thought this would be like. Voices. She would call out with the voice in her mind and the Doctor would answer.

“Doctor,” she says, and her voice disappears in the walls that surround her, without resonance or echo.

Her throat closes up before she can try again, no words coming out. Something is wrong here, so very, very wrong.

She's still in her bedroom, but the bed is now empty, untouched. Melody is gone, and the Doctor is gone, and Rory is gone, too. Except he's not, of course; he's still by her side, holding her hand. She _knows_ this, but she can no longer see him, no longer feel him. She has to remind herself that this is the dream.

She wants to wake up again, at once. Run away from here because something is wrong, is horrifying, and she wants it to _end_.

The Doctor is in here somehow, somewhere, and so she can't leave. Not before she found him. Amy walks a few steps, stops when the echoless sound of her steps freaks her out. She hears the sound, but it's like it is getting swallowed by the air the moment it is done being heard by her. Like its meaningless, with no one else there to hear it. She never thought the way the air carries sound was all that important, until it doesn't.

She forces herself to move on, out of the room. Where is the Doctor? Why isn't he in the bed?

Is this really just a dream caused by the merging of their minds, or is she dead? The thought comes suddenly, without prompting. It feels like she's dead, so much that she is for a moment convinced that she is. She moves on and is still, deep down, convinced that this is death and she is all alone in here forever. It's so _silent_.

She moves on, because it's the only thing she can do.

All the doors open to her without resistance. She wanders through the house that is the same house she lives in but is uninhabited, lifeless. All their stuff is still there, hers and Rory's, the furniture, the carpets. All the mementos and photographs even, the sentimental touches of their past, lined neatly along the shelves and on the walls, but soulless. This is not her home as much as it is a museum dedicated to it.

The Doctor is not here. Amy goes outside, and the outside is all it should be. It's afternoon, as it was. It's warm, pleasantly so, and the air is still, and her footsteps don't echo. It looks like her neighbourhood and she thinks of that time they were trapped between a dream and another and both of them felt so, so real she could never tell which world wasn't. This world now is just like hers but it's empty. There is no one around, and she knows there will never be. She could walk for hours and weeks and years and would never find another living being.

Amy feels like crying, like screaming. She is so terrified and alone and this is real, this is the world she lives in.

“Hello?” she calls. No longer just for the Doctor. For anyone. There is no answer. Her voice doesn't reach far.

The silence is oppressive. Silence and stillness. There's a hint of wind, there are leaves moving in hedges and trees, but it's all without meaning and she is the only one to hear it.

The door of the first house she chooses at random opens when she tries it. It's not locked, and it's empty, the same way her own house is empty. Furniture and books and pictures. An exhibition on someone's life.

She tries more houses. Her travels through time and space have taken form her all inhibitions she may have once had about entering a stranger's home uninvited. The houses are just shells holding an afterimage. The streets are empty. Everything is empty. Amy could walk all the way to the next town, and it would be like this, and the next and the next and the next. The whole planet. She could leave it and it would be like this anywhere in space and time, with only her and the silence.

“Can anyone hear me?” she yells, as loud as she can, her voice a knife that cuts through the silence, which closes around the wound the moment it is made.

“No,” a voice says behind her. “There's only you.”

She turns around so quickly she nearly loses her balance and there he is, right where she has been alone a moment before, and she's so happy and relieved to see him that she throws her arms around him and holds him tight to make sure she's no longer on her own in the universe. It's only then she remembers that it was worry for him that drove her here in the first place.

“I was so worried about you,” she tells him without letting go. “I came looking for you. What is this place? Why is it so...”

“Empty?” the Doctor suggests when she cannot come up with an appropriate word.

“Yes.”

“You're in my mind,” the Doctor points out, as if that explained anything.

“And this is your complete lack of thoughts?” Amy asks, feeling bolder now that she's no longer alone, but also because she needs to make light of the situation when the dread refuses to go away.

“No, it's the lack of everybody else's.” The Doctor takes a step back to get enough room to run his hands over his face before she can take offence to his words. “Oh Amelia,” he sighs. “I'm sorry. You shouldn't be here.”

“Well, you should have woken up then,” Amy complains and playfully boxes his arm.

“Yeah, well, I should have. Not sure why I didn't. It's not been long, has it? It doesn't feel long.”

“It's been four days!” Army snaps.

“Oh.” The Doctor stares at nothing, his hand fiddling with his other hand. “That's not long, is it?”

“It is, when your best friend suddenly falls over and you don't know what's wrong with him!”

“Yes, well. I feared this might happen. Just needed a little time to reboot my mind. I don't sleep much, so sometimes the subconscious takes over in moments like that and makes use of the opportunity. It's really nothing to worry about. Unless there's an invasion going on, then it's bad timing and everything to worry about. There is no invasion going on anymore, right?” He looks at her quite frightened, as if suspecting that's the reason she's here.

“No,” she draws out. “Just two very worried friends who were not told that this is something that 'might happen'.”

“Ah,” he says. “Well. Sorry.”

“Hold on.” Sometimes it is impressive how long one can miss the obvious. “If this is your mind, then why does it look like my neighbourhood?”

“It doesn't,” the Doctor tells her. “You're not a telepath. You do not have the senses required to actually enter someone else's mind, so the machine you used just kind of helps your mind make sense of it by translating it into something you can understand. Hence your neighbourhood.”

“So it doesn't look like this for you?” Amy tries to wrap her mind around that.

“What does _your_ mind look like for you?” the Doctor asks back. “But you linked our minds so I can see how you see it. No worries about me accidentally running into a wall on the way out.”

“So there's a way out?”

“Of course there is. Wasn't that the point? Or did your just want to pop in for a visit?”

“No,” Amy hurries to say. “And to be frank I can't wait to leave. It's, it's.” She tries to think of a word that's not offensive. “Depressing,” she finally settles on. “Dreadful.” That's no better. “It's so silent. I know it's not like that for you, but to me there's just a complete absence of sound and movement and life, and I really, really can't stand it.” She looks at the Doctor looking at her. “It's oppressive,” she adds, when the word comes to her.

“Ah, yes.” The Doctor nods. “As I said, your mind is trying to translate mine with limited means. You see the world as it always was, expect it's empty. Time Lords are telepathic, and we were all linked to one another in a way. Nothing like constant contact, but everyone's always there in the distance like some sort of background noise. You know those noises you only ever notice when they stop? Like that. The Time Lords are gone and so the mental projection you're experiencing is empty. I know it's probably a bit frightening, but don't worry about it.”

A bit frightening doesn't quite cover it. It's lonely in a way that suggests the loneliness will never end. It's horrifying.

“How do you stand it?” she hears herself asking.

“Barely,” the Doctor replies cheerfully. “Now, this device you used to come in here, I bet you didn't find that on your own. Ah, River helped, thank you for thinking of her.”

“Wait, how do you know that?”

“Like I said, you just thought of her. The mental link goes both ways, remember? Don't worry, I won't pry, but it's hard to block out, and, oh, all the things you just thought you don't want me to see in your thoughts, well, you just thought of them, and, uh, I don't think I needed to know that. Or that.”

“Can you please stop talking!” Amy yells, feeling herself go red. She doesn't even have a body here. Did her face go red in the real word? “You talked about the way out. Can we please go now? How do we leave?”

“Oh, easy. This is basically a dream. I just need to wake up.”

“Just like that?” Amy asks, incredulous, and it sounds different to her ears. The echo is back. A car is passing outside the window.

She's lying on the bed beside the Doctor, and Rory and River are looking at her with much confusion on their faces.

“Yes,” the Doctor replies, sitting up beside her, straight as a candle. “Hello River. Nice seeing you. Thanks for saving my life, even though it didn't need saving and you all just kind of interrupted a really nice nap. Hello Rory, long time no see! Or does it just feel long because I now know so many things about you that I didn't know before? Time is funny like that. Gotta say, though, Amy, I could have done without that particular info-”

“Are we really awake?” Amy interrupts him. “Because this feels increasingly like a recurring nightmare of mine.”

“If it is, I'm having it, too,” Rory tells her, before he helps her up with a look that says there will be questions later, and they will be awkward.

“What do you mean,” River asks, very slowly, “we interrupted a nice nap?”

The Doctor opens his mouth to reply and in the end just says, “Ah,” when he realizes that the truthful answer will likely result in pain. “Can't we just forget that bit and focus instead on the part where it's nice to see you?” he suggests hopefully.

“The Doctor got knocked out by the attack and then just kind of forgot to wake up again, and he also kind of forgot to mention that might happen,” Amy helpfully supplies.

“Did he now,” asks Rory, deadpan.

River's face darkens. “So we worried for your life for nothing,” she sums up.

“Well, mostly, yes.”

“Mostly.”

“Yes. Like, ninety percent. Sorry.”

“And the other ten percent are the possibility that you would have forgotten to wake up until you died?”

“Well, if that had happened, I would at least have died very well rested.” The Doctor swings his legs over the edge of the bed and tries to jump up but River pushes him right back down.

“So you made us worry and go through all this trouble for nothing, and at the same time you recklessly endangered your life again without warning. I don't even know what to slap you for.”

“If that's optional, I am fully in favour of you not slapping me at all.”

Amy would be in favour of slapping now, usually. But she can't forget the empty silence inside the dream, where all the noises she never consciously noticed had disappeared, and it removes her form the discussion going on around her, makes it so far away. She has to sit down again, and it worries Rory, and his concern pulls the Doctor and River out of their argument, but that's very distant, too.

For a moment Amy worries that she will never be able to shake off the isolation. Even though they are right in front of her, everyone feels like they aren't really there. Too far away to touch her, even with Rory's hand on her arm and Melody's hand in her hair. Then the Doctor's hand brushes over her eyes, and when she opens them the moment has passed and she's back, everyone is back.

“What happened?” she asks, trying to blink away the disorientation.

“Your mind had trouble dealing with the link. I told you it's not cut out for this. I smoothed things over; the effect should have faded now.”

The Doctor is right. Amy feels normal again. She can't even really remember what has been so strange before. “I'm fine,” she confirms.

“Of course you are, Amy. But that was still a very stupid thing to do.” The Doctor stands, turns to River now as if he knew this was all her idea. After a second, Amy remembers that he does, and even if he didn't, it would be easy to figure out. “That was very dangerous! Don't ever do that, not for me. And especially don't make someone else do it, when they have no experience with things like this.” He sounds angry now. Amy wants to scold him, defend her daughter who loves him and just wanted to help, but Melody doesn't need defending. She looks angry, too, not hurt.

“I would have done it myself if I could have,” she retorts.

“You don't risk Amy and you don't risk yourself!”

“There was no risk.” River raises her voice ever so slightly. “I know this machine and how it works. The link is on the surface; if anything had happened Amy would simply have been thrown out. In the time I grew up in children play with these during sleepovers.” She looks at Amy now, who wonders if she had been at risk of having her mind fried by a children's toy, and at Rory. “It's harmless,” she assures them, her voice almost pleading.

“It's okay, I believe you,” Amy reassures her.

“No, it's not,” the Doctor insists. “With everyone else, perhaps, but not with me.”

“Oh, right! I forgot that you are so very special!”

“Oh River.” The Doctor is smiling now, teasing and a little cold. “Like you'd ever forget that.”

He turns around and strides out of the room before Melody, or anyone else, can react. Amy gets up to follow and only for a fraction of a second feels like falling. “Where are you going, Doctor?”

“TARDIS,” he calls from the hallway. “Crisis over, this place is boring now. No offence.”

“No, don't worry, how could that possibly be offensive?” Rory wonders, striding after Amy.

“Right? I don't know either. And yet people always get in a huff when I say something like that.”

“You really don't, do you?” River.

“Wait, are you just leaving? Right now?”

“Yeah, things to do. Places to see. Non-boring stuff. I was thinking about going to Manhattan again. Last time I was there, there were pigs and Daleks, not in that order. Should all be gone now, but it never hurts to make sure. You never know with Daleks.” He steps into the TARDIS, parked inconveniently in front of the back door, then pops his head out again. “I was rather hoping you would come with me,” he confesses when they all hang behind in the corridor. “Don't you want to come with me?”

“I don't know," Amy teases. “How's the weather in Manhattan?”

The Doctor thinks for second. “Hold on. It's Friday, the eleventh. And currently barely dawn over there. But once the sun is up it will be better than here. Sunny. Not too hot. But with a slight chance of Daleks.”

“Slight chance is good enough,” Amy decides.

“Because then there is a big chance there will not be any Daleks?” Rory suggests hopefully.

“Yes, of course. Who'd want Dalkes?” Amy grins at him and pulls him towards the TARDIS. “Melody? Are you coming?”

But River is still standing in the bedroom, watching them from a distance, her vortex manipulator at the ready. “Not this time,” she says. “Goodbye, Mother, Father. Until next time. Look after each other.” And she's gone.

“I never know if she's being all ominous on purpose,” Rory muses as they step into the box that will take them away. “Or if that just comes with the territory.”

“A little bit of both, usually,” the Doctor says as he's flipping the first switches. “Sorry, I wasn't listening. What did just comment on? River's not coming? That's a pity. But then, I'm sure if she had she would have slapped me after all, sooner or later. Can't say I'll miss that. I can already almost feel it.” He rubs his cheek as if to chase away the imaginary pain, and Amy can't help laughing. A memory wants to come back, of loneliness and isolation, left in the wake of her daughter's departure, but she chases it away and teases the Doctor about his driving skills again, speculating where they will end up instead of their goal, what adventures they will have to live through before they get there.

But they make it to Manhattan on the first attempt. It is indeed barely dawn as they step onto American soil, but the sun is slowly rising, and there are already plenty of people around, and for a moment Amy simply stands there with her eyes closed, listening as they fill the world around her with voices and life.

 

24 September 2018


End file.
